Have I ever mentioned that I really love Google Apps? I do. I really do. One of the things I love (ok, and sometimes dis-love) about it is that there are at least 5 ways to do almost everything! I was recently asked, “What is the easiest way to access my Drive?” Talk about a question with a lot of answers! Here are a few of my favorites.

First of all, the best way to get to your Drive is through the Chrome Browser. Since Chrome is the Google browser, apps like Sheets, Gmail and Drive tend to work better in Chrome. If you don’t have Chrome installed on your computer, no worries - any browser will work. It’s just that Chrome does it better.

Once Chrome is open, you have several options for getting to your Drive.

The most common way I do this is by simply clicking on an already-opened tab. Every time I launch Chrome, I have it set to open 3 tabs - email, Calendar, and Drive. The way I made this happen is by going into my Chrome preferences on my Mac… on a PC or a Chromebook, you can just go to the settings bars (they look like a hamburger!) on the right side of the window and click Settings.

The second option from the top is the menu that will tell Chrome what to do on startup. You can either choose “Continue where you left off,” or “Open a specific page or set of pages.” Since I pin my tabs (that’s for another blog post), I prefer to continue where I left off. With this option, any tabs I have open when I shut down my computer will automatically reopen the next time I start it up - on any computer I use! If, however, you like the idea of having a standard set of tabs open every time you launch Chrome, you might prefer to have it open them by choosing the last option. In this case, when you click on the “set pages” link, you’ll want to make sure that the tabs you want to always open are already open. Simply click “use current pages” and the list will populate with links to the tabs you have open, or just type (or better yet copy and paste) URLs directly in the “Add a new page” box.

2.

If you don’t want to worry about having a tab open, then another method for getting to Drive is to simply type its address in your Omnibox. Yes, typing drive.google.com will take you right into your Drive! In fact blank.google.com (for example mail.google.com or calendar.google.com) will take you directly to your Google tools!

3.

Another way to quickly get there is to create a bookmark. In Chrome, this is as easy as clicking on the star in your Omnibox! Once the bookmark is there, you can easily alter the name to save room on your bookmarks bar. Just right click (or two-finger click, command click on your mac, or ctrl click on your Chromebook or PC) on the bookmark, and click on the Edit menu. You can simply type “Drive,” or better yet, since Drive has such an easily recognizable icon, get rid of the words all together! Now, no matter what webpage you’re on, all you have to do to get to Drive is click on its icon in your bookmarks bar.

4.

Next, since we’re talking about the bookmarks bar, you might notice the 9-pin apps launcher on the far left side of your bookmarks bar. Clicking on this will launch a dashboard similar to the look of a tablet or iPad. Click on Drive to open it. If it’s not there, you can get it from the Chrome Web Store. It’s easy to search and add Drive, but if the thought of that stresses you out, no worries… there is still [at least] one more way.

5.

From any of your other Google apps, such as email or calendar, you will see a similar 9-pin apps launcher over to the right, near your picture or email address. Clicking on that will allow you to see all of the Google Apps - just choose Drive and you’ll be in.

6.

Why not download the desktop version?! Now don’t panic if this doesn’t mean anything to you… you can just keep using Drive like you always have without this option at all, BUT what it does is pretty cool! When you are in Drive, click on the Settings wheel on the far right side, then click “Download Drive.” By doing this, you are actually downloading the Google Drive client, which just creates a folder on your computer that auto-syncs your stuff from your computer to the cloud. There are a couple of really nice things about this: 1) you have offline access to the files and folders you want, and any change make to them while you are offline will take effect once you are connected again; and 2) this is my favorite way to organize my Drive! When I view my files in column format (on my Mac), it’s really easy to tell what’s in folders and what’s not. All I have to do is drag the files and drop them into the right place!

7.

Download Drive on your mobile device if you really want to be a genius! It's available in both the App Store and the Google Play Store, depending upon your device. This has to be one of my favorite apps of all time ever! I love it because I can not only view and edit [most of] my files, but I can create new documents, spreadsheets or presentations right from my phone or tablet! PLUS, I can either upload or even take pictures and video, put them away in a Drive folder, and have them save to my Drive without hogging space on my device!

Are there probably even more ways? YES! And if you know them, feel free to mention them in the comments below! In the meantime, feel free to use the video below to see some of these methods in action . . . then GET DRIVING!